#194: Why Selling Your Company Can Be a Growth Strategy - Sharon Nouh · Practical Founders Podcast summary

Key takeaways

Bootstrapping a software business requires patience; it typically takes 5-6 years before founders start earning significant income.
Focus on adjacent modules that solve core pain points for your target market; avoid chasing unrelated features or markets.
Building strong channel partnerships, especially with trusted resellers and industry leaders, is a highly effective growth strategy.
Maintaining full ownership and control can be advantageous; founders should carefully consider the implications of VC funding and opting for strategic sales.
Preparation, visibility of growth, and negotiation leverage are key when selling a business; founders should plan their exit well in advance.
AI is an enabler in SaaS, helping accelerate development and improve processes, but it is not a threat to the fundamental value of well-managed software companies.

Summary

The Entrepreneurial Journey and Business Vision

Sharon Nouh shares her long-term vision around building and scaling ProSpend, a spend management SaaS platform. She emphasizes the importance of aligning her product development with the specific pain points of mid-market companies, and how her initial focus remained consistent on Australian and New Zealand markets before contemplating expansion. Her strategic decision to sell to ISH was driven by her long-standing goal of entering the UK market, recognizing the value of partnerships over VC funding, and maintaining control over her company's direction. Her journey underscores how clear vision and strategic choices can shape a company's growth and exit.

Product Development and Market Focus

Sharon discusses how her company started with expense management and expanded into full spend management, adding modules like accounts payable, purchase orders, and travel budgets. She highlights the significance of targeting mid-market companies, typically with over 20 employees and processing significant volumes of transactions, avoiding small businesses that don’t have the same pain points. Her approach to growth relied on developing adjacent modules that CFOs needed, leveraging integrations with key partners like MYOB, and refining product features based on customer pain points like invoice automation, fraud control, and workflow management. This section illustrates her disciplined product focus and expansion strategy.

Bootstrapping, Funding, and Growth Strategies

Detailing her experience, Sharon explains how she bootstrapped her company for over a decade, investing profits back into product development and support. She discusses her cautious approach to funding, including her rejection of VC investment due to concerns over loss of control and the risk of unnecessary expansion. Instead, she pursued smaller debt loans with lenders like Lighter Capital to accelerate growth, focusing on multiplying revenue streams through product expansion while maintaining full ownership. Her insights stress the importance of organic growth and strategic funding choices for bootstrapped founders.

Partnerships and Channel Strategies

Sharon outlines her strategic use of partnerships, especially with MYOB and reseller channels, which now generate around 50% of new customer leads. She details her innovative networking approach via organizations like Head Over Heels, which facilitated introductions to key industry players like the CEO of MYOB. Her focus on trust and local support strengthened these relationships, proving that building personal relationships and leveraging existing networks are crucial for growth in the Australian mid-market. This section underscores the power of partnerships and reputation in scaling software businesses.

Selling the Business and Life After Exit

Although Sharon sold ProSpend to ISH, she continues to run the company and plans to expand into the UK. Her decision to sell was driven by a strategic vision, positive market conditions, and the desire to capitalize on her company’s value, rather than immediate financial necessity. She emphasizes thorough preparation, maintaining an upward trend in her business, and negotiations based on clear initial terms. Post-sale, her focus shifted to personal milestones, including buying a home and spending more time with her family, exemplifying the balanced perspective many founders seek after a successful exit.

Reflections on Exit and Future Trends in SaaS and AI

Sharon reflects on her decision to delay VC funding, valuing control over her company’s future and exit timing. She discusses her awareness of AI as both an opportunity and a challenge, using AI to accelerate product development and streamline operations while cautiously integrating it into her financial processes. She dismisses fears that AI will rapidly displace SaaS, noting that customer trust and business relationships remain critical. Her insights emphasize that sustainable SaaS growth depends on trust, quality, and strategic innovation, not just technological disruption.

Show notes

Sharon Nouh built ProSpend, a spend management SaaS platform for mid-market companies, after seeing firsthand how broken expense processes were in corporate travel. Starting with an expense tool, focused on her home market in Australia, she bootstrapped the company and landed a global enterprise as her first customer with a simple but powerful product vision.

Over 10 years, she expanded ProSpend into a full spend management system covering expenses, accounts payable, purchase orders, and budgets. The company grew to about 1,000 customers and 50 employees, with annual contracts ranging from roughly $15K to $40K, driven by strong mid-market focus and channel partnerships.

In 2025 Sharon sold ProSpend to ISH (Invincible Software Holdings), a strategic acquirer. She still runs ProSpend but can now accelerate expansion into the UK. After years of staying independent, she chose a acquisition partner over VC funding to maintain control and execute her long-term vision, showing how a sale can be a strategic move—not an endpoint.

Key Takeaways

Bootstrap Reality — It took five to six years before taking meaningful income, with constant cash flow pressure early on.
Product Expansion — Growth came from adding adjacent modules CFOs needed, not chasing unrelated features or markets.
Channel Leverage — Partnering with MYOB and resellers now drives about 50% of new customers efficiently.
Control Matters — Avoiding VC preserved full control over timing and terms of exit decisions.

Quote from Sharon Nouh, CEO and Founder of ProSpend

"A couple of years ago, one of the visions that I had for ProSpend was to expand from Australia into the UK. The UK was always going to be the market that we wanted to move into, rather than the US, because it's a very aligned, very similar market.

"And also because one of our competitors, WebExpenses, had been bought and sold about four times, and they were the incumbent in the UK. They were suffering. They hadn't been developing their product. There was a real gap for us to go into the UK and start picking up the mid-market there.

"So the question was, do I get VC funding, even though we've always been bootstrapped. Or do I look for an acquiring partner, somebody from the UK who could take us in there with boots on the ground and market intelligence? And I chose the latter and sold the business that I still run."

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#194: Why Selling Your Company Can Be a Growth Strategy - Sharon Nouh